- Table View
- List View
Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World
by Steven JohnsonFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of How We Got to Now and Where Good Ideas Come From, a look at the world-changing innovations we made while keeping ourselves entertained. This lushly illustrated history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that, throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused. Johnson's storytelling is just as delightful as the inventions he describes, full of surprising stops along the journey from simple concepts to complex modern systems. He introduces us to the colorful innovators of leisure: the explorers, proprietors, showmen, and artists who changed the trajectory of history with their luxurious wares, exotic meals, taverns, gambling tables, and magic shows. Johnson compellingly argues that observers of technological and social trends should be looking for clues in novel amusements. You'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.From the Hardcover edition.
Wonderstruck: How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We Think
by Helen De CruzA philosopher explores the transformative role of wonder and awe in an uncertain worldWonder and awe lie at the heart of life&’s most profound questions. Wonderstruck shows how these emotions respond to our fundamental need to make sense of ourselves and everything around us, and how they enable us to engage with the world as if we are experiencing it for the first time.Drawing on the latest psychological insights on emotions, Helen De Cruz argues that wonder and awe are emotional drives that motivate us to inquire and discover new things, and that humanity has deliberately nurtured these emotions in cultural domains such as religion, science, and magic. Tracing how wonder and awe unify philosophy, the humanities, and the sciences, De Cruz provides new perspectives on figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, William James, Rachel Carson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Abraham Heschel. Along the way, she explains how these singular emotions empower us to be open-minded, to experience joy and hope, and to be resilient in the face of personal troubles and global challenges.Taking inspiration from Descartes&’s portrayal of wonder as &“that sudden surprise of the soul,&” this illuminating book reveals how wonder and awe are catalysts that can help us reclaim what makes life worth living and preserve the things we find wonderful and valuable in our lives.
Woody Allen and Philosophy
by William Irwin Tom Morris Mark T. Conard Aeon J. SkobleFifteen philosophers representuing different schools of thought answer the question what is Woody Allen trying to say in his films? And why should anyone care?Focusing on different works and varied aspects of Allen's multifaceted output, these essays explore the philosophical undertones of Anne Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy and reminds us that just because the universe is meaningless and life is pointless is no reason to commit suicide.
Woody Allen and Philosophy: You Mean My Whole Fallacy Is Wrong?
by Mark T. Conard Aeon J. SkobleOne need not be a philosophy major to appreciate Woody Allen's take on life's big questions. Conard and Skoble collect 15 views on such themes in his films as philosophical commentary.
Word Meaning and Belief (Routledge Library Editions: Semantics and Semiology #11)
by S.G. PulmanFirst published in 1983, the aim of this book is to diagnose linguists’ failure to advance satisfactory theories of lexical meaning, then to propose the requirements that such a theory should meet and, drawing on work in philosophy and psychology, to take the first steps towards satisfying these requirements. It begins by discussing the work of Quine on the indeterminacy of translation and it is shown that attempts by linguists to answer Quine’s arguments by proposing universal ‘semantic primitives’ or their equivalents is unsatisfactory. The relation between the theory of word meaning and the theory of categorisation is explored, and an alternative to Rosch’s ‘family resemblance’ account of the ‘prototype’ effect in both nouns and verbs is provided. The author argues that identification of certain implicit categories like ‘action’ and ‘event’ can be related to principles of individuation, and builds on the work of Kripke and Putnam on proper names and natural kind terms. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics and the philosophy of language.
Word and Meaning in Ancient Alexandria: Theories of Language from Philo to Plotinus
by David RobertsonDuring the late Hellenistic and early Imperial periods (B.C. 50 - A.D. 300), important developments may be traced in the philosophy of language and its relationship to mind. This book examines theories of language in the work of theologians and philosophers linked to Ancient Alexandria. The growth of Judaism and Christianity in cultural centers of the Roman Empire, above all Alexandria, provides valuable testimony to the philosophical vitality of this period. The study of Later Greek philosophy should be more closely integrated with the Church Fathers, particularly in the theologically sensitive issue of the nature of language. Robertson traces some related attempts to reconcile immaterial, intelligible reality and the intelligibility of language, explain the structure of language, and clarify the nature of meaning. These shared problems are handled with greater philosophical sophistication by Plotinus, although the comparison with Philo, Clement, and Origen illustrates significant similarities as well as differences between Neoplatonism and early Jewish and Christian philosophy.
Word and Object, new edition
by Willard Van QuineA new edition of Quine's most important work.Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is a social art. In acquiring it we have to depend entirely on intersubjectively available cues as to what to say and when." As Patricia Smith Churchland notes in her foreword to this new edition, with Word and Object Quine challenged the tradition of conceptual analysis as a way of advancing knowledge. The book signaled twentieth-century philosophy's turn away from metaphysics and what Churchland calls the "phony precision" of conceptual analysis.In the course of his discussion of meaning and the linguistic mechanisms of objective reference, Quine considers the indeterminacy of translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our language's referential apparatus, clarifies semantic problems connected with the imputation of existence, and marshals reasons for admitting or repudiating each of various categories of supposed objects. In addition to Churchland's foreword, this edition offers a new preface by Quine's student and colleague Dagfinn Follesdal that describes the never-realized plans for a second edition of Word and Object, in which Quine would offer a more unified treatment of the public nature of meaning, modalities, and propositional attitudes.
Word and Sentence: Bhartrhari and Wittgenstein
by Sibajiban BhattacharyyaThe article begins with an exploration of different varieties of naturalism in order to understand what "naturalism" means in linguistic theory.
Word, Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)
by Valerie C. CooperMaria Stewart is believed by many to have been the first American woman of any race to give public political speeches. In Word, Like Fire, Valerie C. Cooper argues that the religious, political, and social threads of Maria Stewart's thought are tightly interwoven, such that focusing narrowly on any one aspect would be to misunderstand her rhetoric. Cooper demonstrates how a certain kind of biblical interpretation can be a Rosetta Stone for understanding various areas of African American life and thought that still resonate today.
Wording the World: Veena Das and Scenes of Inheritance (Forms of Living)
by Roma ChatterjiThe essays in this book explore the critical possibilities that have been opened by Veena Das’s work. Taking off from her writing on pain as a call for acknowledgment, several essays explore how social sciences render pain, suffering, and the claims of the other as part of an ethics of responsibility. They search for disciplinary resources to contest the implicit division between those whose pain receives attention and those whose pain is seen as out of sync with the times and hence written out of the historical record.Another theme is the co-constitution of the event and the everyday, especially in the context of violence. Das’s groundbreaking formulation of the everyday provides a frame for understanding how both violence and healing might grow out of it. Drawing on notions of life and voice and the struggle to write one’s own narrative, the contributors provide rich ethnographies of what it is to inhabit a devastated world.Ethics as a form of attentiveness to the other, especially in the context of poverty, deprivation, and the corrosion of everyday life, appears in several of the essays. They take up the classic themes of kinship and obligation but give them entirely new meaning.Finally, anthropology’s affinities with the literary are reflected in a final set of essays that show how forms of knowing in art and in anthropology are related through work with painters, performance artists, and writers.
Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)
by Colby DickinsonThere has been much philosophical speculation on the potential failure of language as well as the search for a presentation of the “thing itself” beyond representation. Words Fail pursues the writings of a trio of philosophers—Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Giorgio Agamben—as prime examples of how modern poetry presents us with a profitable vantage point from which to survey the ongoing struggle of living in a highly fragmented world.Alongside these thinkers, this book looks specifically at the form of spirituality that is given shape by this intersection of poetics and theological-philosophical reflection—all of which offer rich suggestions about our spiritual nature.
Words Like Loaded Pistols
by Sam LeithLeith, a British journalist and writer, offers a no-nonsense introduction to rhetoric for an intelligent, but non-academic audience. He uses both historical and contemporary, real and literary examples to present where western rhetoric comes from and how it has been taught/used over the ages; what the terms of rhetoric are; why different arguments work the way they do and why some arguments work while others don't. The aim of the book is to instill a practical awareness for rhetoric. He considers five parts of rhetoric--invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery--as well as three branches of oratory--deliberative, judicial, and epideictic rhetoric. Along the way he draws on great speeches and "champions of rhetoric," from Martin Luther King to Satan to Barack Obama to Hitler to Cicero. There is a glossary of rhetorical terms in the back. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Words Like Loaded Pistols
by Sam LeithRhetoric is all around us. It's what inspires armies, convicts criminals, and makes or breaks presidential candidates. And it isn't just the preserve of politicians. It's in the presentation to a key client, the half-time talk in the locker room, and the plea to your children to eat their vegetables. Rhetoric gives words power: it persuades and cajoles, inspires and bamboozles, thrills and misdirects. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you?In Words Like Loaded Pistols, Sam Leith traces the art of persuasion, beginning in ancient Syracuse and taking us on detours as varied and fascinating as Elizabethan England, Milton's Satanic realm, the Springfield of Abraham Lincoln and the Springfield of Homer Simpson. He explains how language has been used by the great heroes of rhetoric (such as Cicero and Martin Luther King Jr.), as well as some villains (like Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.)Leith provides a primer to rhetoric's key techniques. In Words Like Loaded Pistols, you'll find out how to build your own memory-palace; you'll be introduced to the Three Musketeers: Ethos, Pathos and Logos; and you'll learn how to use chiasmus with confidence and occultation without thinking about it. Most importantly of all, you will discover that rhetoric is useful, relevant - and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
Words Like Loaded Pistols
by Sam LeithRhetoric is all around us. It's what inspires armies, convicts criminals, and makes or breaks presidential candidates. And it isn't just the preserve of politicians. It's in the presentation to a key client, the half-time talk in the locker room, and the plea to your children to eat their vegetables. Rhetoric gives words power: it persuades and cajoles, inspires and bamboozles, thrills and misdirects. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you?In Words Like Loaded Pistols, Sam Leith traces the art of persuasion, beginning in ancient Syracuse and taking us on detours as varied and fascinating as Elizabethan England, Milton's Satanic realm, the Springfield of Abraham Lincoln and the Springfield of Homer Simpson. He explains how language has been used by the great heroes of rhetoric (such as Cicero and Martin Luther King Jr.), as well as some villains (like Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.)Leith provides a primer to rhetoric's key techniques. In Words Like Loaded Pistols, you'll find out how to build your own memory-palace; you'll be introduced to the Three Musketeers: Ethos, Pathos and Logos; and you'll learn how to use chiasmus with confidence and occultation without thinking about it. Most importantly of all, you will discover that rhetoric is useful, relevant - and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama
by Sam LeithIn Words Like Loaded Pistols, Sam Leith traces the art of persuasion, beginning in ancient Syracuse and taking us on detours as varied and fascinating as Elizabethan England, Milton's Satanic realm, the Springfield of Abraham Lincoln and the Springfield of Homer Simpson. He explains how language has been used by the great heroes of rhetoric (such as Cicero and Martin Luther King Jr.), as well as some villains (like Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.) Words Like Loaded Pistols is a primer to rhetoric's key techniques; you'll find out how to build your own memory-palace; you'll be introduced to the Three Musketeers: Ethos, Pathos and Logos; and you'll learn how to use chiasmus with confidence and occultation without thinking about it. Most importantly of all, you will discover that rhetoric is useful, relevant - and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
Words Made Flesh: Formations of the Postsecular in British Romanticism (Studies in Religion and Culture)
by Sean DempseyReligion is not merely a different way of thinking but is rather an alternative manner of being—it is both a way of attending to the world and a form of embodiment. Literature provides another key to legislating new ways of being in the world. Some of the best Romantic literature can be understood as experimental attempts to access and harness infrasensible energy—affects and dispositions operating beneath the threshold of consciousness—in the hope that by so doing it may become possible to project elusive affects into the practical world of conscious thinking and judgment. Words Made Flesh demonstrates how the Romantic poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley and the novelist Jane Austen affect, mediate, and ultimately alter our very sense of embodiment in ways that have lasting effects on readers’ affective, political, and spiritual lives. Such works, which unsettle habitual ways of seeing, are perennially valuable because they not only call attention to the dispositions we normally inhabit, but they also suggest ways of forging new patterns and forms of life through the medium of embodiment.Drawing on the work of these writers, Dempsey argues that Romanticism’s contribution to our understanding of the postsecular becomes clearer when considered in relation to three timely scholarly conversations not previously synthesized: secular and postsecular studies, affect theory, and media studies. By weaving together these three strands, Words Made Flesh clarifies how Romanticism provides a useful field guide to the new geography of the self ushered in by secular modernity, while also pointing toward potential postsecular futures. Ultimately, Dempsey argues for a view of literature that recognizes it as an essential component to ethical practice.
Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion
by Justine M. Bakker and David KlineThe first sustained treatment of religion and religions in the scholarship of a prominent Caribbean thinkerSylvia Wynter is a profoundly transdisciplinary scholar whose works span an impressive array of theory, literature, science, anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies as well as different forms, including essays, plays, a novel, and a 935-page unpublished manuscript entitled “Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World.” Whatever the medium, Wynter frequently engages religion as a relevant category of analysis, from reflections on Christianity, Islam, and Rastafarianism to the category and role of religion as a universal aspect of human social production.Wynter’s writings have received enthusiastic attention by scholars in Black studies, Caribbean theory, critical race theory, literature, and philosophy. But until recently little scholarly writing exists that directly engages the topic of religion in her corpus. Words Made Flesh seeks to fill this gap by focusing exclusively on religion, religions, and religiosity in her work.Bringing together scholars that provide a wide variety of theoretical perspectives on religion, political theology, social theory, and science studies, this book offers an in-depth engagement with one of the most innovative and important thinkers of the last forty years and illustrates how Wynter’s writing has significant implications for the study of religion and religion’s relationship to colonialism, race, humanism, science, and political theology.
Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic
by Laur VallikiviWords and Silences tells the story of an extraordinary group of independent Nenets reindeer herders in the northwest Russian Arctic. Under socialism these nomads managed to avoid the Soviet state and its institutions of collectivization, but soon after the atheist regime collapsed, while some staunchly resisted, many of them became fervent fundamentalist Christians. By exploring differing concepts of how traditional and convert Nenets use and define words and of the meanings they ascribe to the withholding of speech, Laur Vallikivi shows how a local form of global Christianity has emerged through intricate negotiations of self, sociality, and cosmology. Moving beyond studies of modernization and globalization that have all-too-predictable outcomes for indigenous peoples, Words and Silences invites us to view not only religious devotees, but words themselves, as agents of a complex and ongoing transformation.
Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur
by Dean Van NguyenBefore his murder at twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the pre-eminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded several platinum-selling albums, starred in major films and became an activist and political hero known the world over.In this cultural history and brilliantly researched biography, Dean Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac's coming of age, fame and influence and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades crucially engages with the influence of Tupac's mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party, with its dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality, informed Tupac's art. Tupac's childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his militant stepfather Mutulu Shakur, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America's inherent injustices.Drawing upon conversations with the people who bore witness - from Panther veterans and other committed Marxist revolutionaries of 1970s America, to good friends and close collaborators of the rapper himself - Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics. Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture and how America produced, in Tupac and Afeni, two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.
Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur
by Dean Van NguyenBefore his murder at twenty-five, Tupac Shakur rose to staggering artistic heights as the pre-eminent storyteller of the 90s, building, in the process, one of the most iconic public personas of the last half century. He recorded several platinum-selling albums, starred in major films and became an activist and political hero known the world over.In this cultural history and brilliantly researched biography, Dean Van Nguyen reckons with Tupac's coming of age, fame and influence and how the political machinations that shaped him as a boy have since buoyed his legacy as a revolutionary following the George Floyd uprising. Words for My Comrades crucially engages with the influence of Tupac's mother, Afeni, whose role in the Black Panther Party, with its dedication to dismantling American imperialism and police brutality, informed Tupac's art. Tupac's childhood as a son of the Panthers, coupled with the influence of his militant stepfather Mutulu Shakur, became his own riveting code of ethics that helped listeners reckon with America's inherent injustices.Drawing upon conversations with the people who bore witness - from Panther veterans and other committed Marxist revolutionaries of 1970s America, to good friends and close collaborators of the rapper himself - Van Nguyen demonstrates how Tupac became one of the most enduring musical legends in hip-hop history and how intimately his name is threaded with the legacy of Black Panther politics. Words for My Comrades is the story of how the energy of the Black political movement was subsumed by culture and how America produced, in Tupac and Afeni, two of its most iconic, enduring revolutionaries.
Words of Power: A Feminist Reading of the History of Logic (Routledge Library Editions: Logic)
by Andrea NyeOriginally published in 1990. A common complaint of philosophers, and men in general, has been that women are illogical. On the other hand, rationality, defined as the ability to follow logical argument, is often claimed to be a defining characteristic of man. Andrea Nye undermines assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independent of concrete human relations, logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In a series of studies of the logics of historical figures Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, imperial administrators, church officials, or scientists. She relates logical techniques, such as logical division, syllogisms, and truth functions, to ways in which those with power speak to and about those subject to them. She shows, in the specific historical settings of Ancient and Hellenistic Greece, medieval Europe, and Germany between the World Wars, how logicians reworked language so that dialogue and reciprocity are impossible and one speaker is forced to accept the words of another. In the personal, as well as confrontative style of her readings, Nye points the way to another power in the words of women that might break into and challenge rational discourses that have structured Western thought and practice.
Words of Wisdom
by Gareth SouthwellWords of Wisdom brings together 360 of philosophy's most famous quotations, explaining their meaning and telling the stories behind them. Western philosophy may be said to have begun in ancient Greece, where, inscribed in his temple at Delphi, the words of the god Apollo commanded those who sought wisdom to first "know thyself." With the author's usual humour and clarity of style, the whole 2,500 year history of philosophy is laid bare. Each quote is set in the context of its cultural background, author biography and general outlook; trends are highlighted, links established, and influences traced, all in a way that is entertaining, thought-provoking, and even fun. Words of Wisdom is the perfect book for those who always wanted to ask what philosophy was about, but were afraid they might not understand the answer.
Words of Wisdom: Philosophy's Most Important Quotations and Their Meaning
by Gareth SouthwellWords of Wisdom brings together 360 of Philosophy's most famous quotations, explaining their meaning and telling the stories behind them. Western philosophy may be said to have begun in ancient Greece, where, inscribed in his temple at Delphi, the words of the god Apollo commanded those who sought wisdom to first 'know thyself'. With the author's usual humour and clarity of style, the whole 2,500 year history of philosophy is laid bare. Each quote is set in the context of its cultural background, author biography and general outlook; trends are highlighted, links established, and influences traced, all in a way that is entertaining, thought-provoking, and even fun. Words of Wisdom is the perfect book for those who always wanted to ask what philosophy was about, but were afraid they might not understand the answer.
Words of Wisdom: Philosophy's Most Important Quotations and Their Meaning
by Gareth SouthwellWords of Wisdom brings together 360 of Philosophy's most famous quotations, explaining their meaning and telling the stories behind them. Western philosophy may be said to have begun in ancient Greece, where, inscribed in his temple at Delphi, the words of the god Apollo commanded those who sought wisdom to first 'know thyself'. With the author's usual humour and clarity of style, the whole 2,500 year history of philosophy is laid bare. Each quote is set in the context of its cultural background, author biography and general outlook; trends are highlighted, links established, and influences traced, all in a way that is entertaining, thought-provoking, and even fun. Words of Wisdom is the perfect book for those who always wanted to ask what philosophy was about, but were afraid they might not understand the answer.
Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions
by Rob GoodmanWhy is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero – and his predecessors, rivals, and successors – political theorist and former speechwriter Rob Goodman tracks the development of this ideal, in which speech is both spontaneous and stylized, and in which the pursuit of eloquence mitigates political inequalities. He goes on to trace the fierce disputes over Ciceronian speech in the modern world through the work of such figures as Burke, Macaulay, Tocqueville, and Schmitt, explaining how rhetorical risk-sharing has broken down. Words on Fire offers a powerful critique of today's political language – and shows how the struggle over the meaning of eloquence has shaped our world.